A Media Definition of Peaky Blinders

A media
definition of
Peaky Blinders
By Jack O’Hara
What is Peaky
Blinders?
Peaky Blinders is a British period crime

drama television series set in Birmingham,
England. The series follows the exploits of
the Shelby crime family in the direct
aftermath of the First World War. The
fictional family is loosely based on a real
urban youth gang of the same name, who
were active in the city from the 1890s to
the early 20th century.
How do producers
define an audience?
Media producers often define and

categorise their audience through many
different demographic profiles. A
demographic audience profile defines
groups of people based on things such as
age, socio-economic status and gender.
Age
This will usually be broken down in to different categories
such as <18 (underage viewers), 18-29 (Young adults), 30-44
(Adults) and then 45+. (Older adults)
Peaky Blinders is a historical show that has been marketed to
anybody over the age of 18 and it shows in their viewership,
with the 30-44 age range being the highest. However, this is
not a surprise as BBC television shows are often mostly
watched by that age range. The surprise here is how many
people from the other categories watch the show, too.
The least surprising thing about this graphic is the amount of
<18 viewers as it is advertised for an older age group.
Though, this also shows that not everyone will listen to that
advice.
The highest average rating by age group is the 18-29 group
with an average rating of ‘8.93*’
Gender
Gender is typically divided into sections titled ‘all’, ‘male’
or ‘female’. However, some other metrics will also include
an ‘other’ section for people who don’t feel comfortable
disclosing that information or for people who feel as if
they don’t fall into any of the previously mentioned
sections.
From the graphic, we can see that almost half of the
viewership of Peaky Blinders comes from people that
identify as male, with a fraction of the viewership coming
from people that identify as female. However, there is a
large percentage of people who ticked the ‘other’ option,
too.
The female demographic have also given Peaky Blinders
their highest rating in ‘9.0’, showing that even though it is
a male dominant viewership, it is held in high regards to
people who identify as female, too.
Socio-economical
status
Peaky Blinders is often marketed towards working
class people, in the same way that most BBC
television shows are.
I personally believe that Peaky Blinders is
marketed towards people in the Group C2, Group
D and Group E socio-economical groups because
these are the groups that are most likely to have
the free-time to watch the show and are the
most likely groups to be available to watch the
show within its Sunday 9:00PM timeslot.
These socio-economical groups of people are
who are seen as the working class people, which
includes trader jobs, students, unemployed
people and pensioners.
Quantitative research
Quantitative research is a research strategy that focuses
on collecting and analysing numerical data. From here,
quantitative research is used to find patterns and
averages in the viewer-base, make predictions on what
will happen to the viewer-base and then generalise
those results to the wider population.
Organisations like ‘BARB’ will often make surveys for the
viewer-base to answer, which in turn leads to them
researching more into the demographic of the audience
to gain information about what the audience like in the
show in question and shows like that one, too.
Platforms like surveymonkey are often used in these
situations because it provides useful information to the
producers about their audience demographic for free.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is essentially the opposite
to quantitative research. While quantitative
research looks at different numbers and
figures, qualitative research looks at non-
numerical data such as text, videos or audio to
understand different opinions and
experiences with a television show.
Qualitative research can be used to gather
more in-depth insights into the audience
demographic of a television show.
A good way for producers to collect this sort
of information is by buying ‘media kits’ and
‘press packs’ from different film and television
companies.
Ratings
Peaky Blinders recorded a record amount of
viewers from the United Kingdom for the
season finale of series five. Overall, 3.84
million people watched the episode, which is
a massive increase from the previous record
set by episode three of the same series (3.76).
The series also enjoyed an average of 5.9
million people watching in a seven-day
consolidated viewing across all screens.
The shows popularity has been ramping up
throughout the years through word of mouth.
However, the move from BBC Two to BBC One
is a massive factor of this, too.
Bibliography
https://peakyblinders.tv/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2442560/
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/
2019/breaking-the-class-ceiling-tv-industry-social-makeup-revealed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z3k9nbk/revision/2
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/peaky-blinders-season-5-finale-
draws-shows-highest-ever-ratings/#:~:text=Overall%2C%203.84%20mill
ion%20people%20watched,consolidated%20viewing%20across%20all%
20screens
.

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Peaky Blinders is a British period crime

Media producers often define and

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